The present invention relates to a composition for roller for the production of rollers or paper feed which can be used in contact with the photoreceptor in an electronic copying machine or printer which performs copying or printing electrostatically and to rollers fabricated using the composition.
The operating principle of an electronic copying machine, for instance, is such that a toner is electrostatically deposited on a photoreceptor for the formation of an electrostatic latent image true to an original, the toner image is then transferred to a sheet of paper fed to the system, and finally the toner pattern on the paper is fixed by thermal fusion to provide a hard copy of the original.
Thus, the above electronic copying machine performs copying in the process sequence of charging, exposure, development, transfer, fixing, cleaning, and erase, and to execute the above sequence, a variety of rollers are disposed either in contact with the photoreceptor or around and certain distances apart from the photoreceptor. For the manufacture of such rollers, an electrically conductive polyurethane foam, chloroprene rubber or EP rubber have so far been used in many instances.
However, the rollers for the charging, development, transfer and cleaning steps, in particular, are often used in contact with the photoreceptor and when rollers made of the above-mentioned materials are used for these steps, the unreacted monomer, oligomer and other non-reactive additives contained in the rollers are transferred to the photoreceptor to contaminate it so that the quality of the image is sacrificed.
To overcome the above trouble, the surface of the roller is usually coated with a nylon material or covered with a heat-shrinkable tube.
Furthermore, in order to control the resistivity of the roller, the surface of the roller is similarly coated with a semiconductor material.
However, since the conventional roller cannot be provided with a sufficient degree of adhesion by such surface coating, it is common practice to treat the roller surface with a primer or cover the surface with an electrically conductive, highly adhesive material, e.g. epichlorohydrin rubber, in advance. However, the interposition of an adhesive layer between the electrically conductive roller and the surface coating layer or heat-shrinkable tubing tends to cause variation in roller characteristics and, as an additional disadvantage, increases the cost of production.
In view of the above state of the art, the present invention has for its object to provide a composition for roller for an electronic copying machine or printer with which an alcohol-soluble nylon layer can be directly constructed on the roller without a primer or other pretreatment.
The present invention, therefore, is directed to a composition for roller for an electronic copying machine or printer
which comprises a vinyl polymer (A) having at least one alkenyl group per molecule.
The present invention is further directed to a roller which is fabricated using said composition for roller.
The present invention is now described in detail.